Recently, CAD/CAM dentistry (Computer-Aided Design and Computer-Aided Manufacturing in dentistry) has provided a broad range of dental restorations, including crowns, veneers, inlays and onlays, fixed bridges, dental implant restorations, and orthodontic appliances. In a typical CAD/CAM based dental procedure, a treating dentist can prepare the tooth being restored either as a crown, inlay, onlay or veneer. The prepared tooth and its surroundings are then imaged by a three dimensional (3D) imaging camera and uploaded to a computer for design. Alternatively, a dentist can obtain an impression of the tooth to be restored and the impression may be scanned directly, or formed into a model to be scanned, and uploaded to a computer for design.
Current dental restoration design programs may display the 3D image or the scanned model on the computer as a virtual 3D dental representation of the patient's dentition. The design programs may also allow users to design dental restoration based on the 3D image or the scanned model. When more than one tooth have been imaged or scanned, the users are only allowed to move or adjust the teeth individually. That is, when the users move or scale one tooth, other teeth next to it will not change accordingly, which causes some inconvenience and inefficiency for the design.